True story: A friend of mine once posted a Missed Connections ad for her pants, but this might be better. (OK. Not really. But on the Craigslist scale of shame and depression, it's pretty high.)
Via Craigslist:
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Following the Texas Rangers' World Series loss, Dave Tarrant, of the Dallas Morning News, decided to give up sports for a year. "I'm determined to cut my obsession with sports," he wrote on his blog. "I want my life back. ... Haunted by all the time I've spent on the couch watching my team on the tube, I'm turning it off." His e-mails with Michael Kruse, a staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times and a contributing writer for Grantland, detail his his first true test -- his first Sunday without the NFL.
From: Tarrant, David
To: Kruse, Michael
This is my first Sunday in self-imposed exile. I'm taking a year off from watching sports. For about 50 years, I've been your average fan, riding the ups and downs of my teams. In my case, it all started in the early 1960s in Pittsburgh. Bill Mazeroski's dramatic bottom-of-the-9th home run beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series and transformed a city better known for its belching smokestacks and woeful sports teams. The Pirates and Steelers were awful in the 1950s. When I moved to Dallas in my mid-20s, I adopted the colorful weak sisters of the local franchises -- the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Mavericks. No Cowboys for me, thank you. I remained a diehard Steelers fan. Over the years, I followed my four teams -- Pirates, Steelers, Rangers and Mavericks -- through thick and thin. In the late 1980s, when I went to work for a few years in Germany, I checked the box scores every day in Stars and Stripes or the International Herald Tribune.
Have you followed the Jordan Jefferson saga? If you haven't, it's not measurably different from any of the other black marks on college football's name. The gist is that the LSU quarterback and some teammates were at a Baton Rouge bar in August when a fight broke out. Four people were badly beaten — one suffered three fractured vertebrae — and witnesses reported that Jefferson kicked another in the face. He was charged with felony second-degree battery, and that charge was reduced to a misdemeanor last week. Nobody seems to be denying that the alleged brawl happened, but a grand jury decided it didn't warrant a felony. As his lawyer argued, the injury wasn't serious enough. Jefferson was reinstated, and scored a touchdown in the first quarter of last week's win against Kentucky.
Fair enough. If you can't live with that storyline, you shouldn't be watching college football at all.
I think bragging is a terrible offense. There's nothing worse than someone who can't have a minor success without broadcasting it to the world. It's a sign of deep insecurity and shallow character. Boasters, braggarts, and grandstanders are the worst people in the world. I'd never have one as my friend.
Which is why I'm not going to get into the results from my Week 5 preview. Was I a perfect three-for-three in upset predictions, calling wins for Auburn, Kansas State, and Pittsburgh? Sorry, that's not for me to say. Did I pick Clemson's win at Virginia Tech, Wisconsin's effortless romp, Alabama's domination of the Gators, the wild unpredictability of A&M and Arkansas, and Illinois' tenuous hold on an undefeated record? Who knows, man. Who knows. If it were true, I wouldn't flaunt that record here. It's not my place. And if people* want to go around saying I'm some kind of expert with a sixth sense about the game, that's their business. As a professional, I try to stay outside that fray.
*My mom.
I'm just here to be humble and talk college football. Let's get to the Week 5 action.
Lately I've been getting that panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach that lets me know the weeks are about to get really long. It's a seasonal thing. Once baseball ends there is literally nothing to get us from Sunday night to Saturday morning. OK, not literally. Maybe you've got friends. Maybe family. But those things can't fulfill you the same way. So my question this week is, how do non-baseball fans make it through July and August? Those months are already the worst of the year. If I didn't have baseball to pass the time, I'd probably pay thousands to those lobbyists who want to make hibernation pills available to the public. And guys, I'm not even sure those lobbyists exist.
But I shouldn't complain. Playoff baseball is about to start, the college football season is in full swing, and October has the best weather of any month in the year. This is the golden age. Let's get to business.
